


Regency

by Sinnatious



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Pearl-centric (Steven Universe), Post-Episode s05e29-32 Change Your Mind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 18:36:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20296111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinnatious/pseuds/Sinnatious
Summary: Pearl has one last secret she can't avoid any longer. Pink Pearl is right there, after all, it's only a matter of time before somebody asks.





	Regency

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't originally going to post this fic - it was just a bit of self-indulgent imagining of a scene I desperately wanted to see regarding Pink's two Pearls (and the White Pearl theory), but based on the movie trailer it seems like it's a scene we'll never get so here's my cathartic take on how it might go.

White Diamond is being accommodating. Blue and Yellow are the happiest they've ever been. They're finally able to heal the corrupted gems. So many old comrades made whole again. So many lives spared pain and misery.

So nobody brings it up. The time isn't right. No one wants to break the mood.

Pearl knows it won't last forever. Pink Pearl is right there, after all, quietly herded by Blue Pearl and Yellow Pearl in the background while their diamonds bath in the healing waters. Her good eye follows Steven, slowly blinking, whenever he is in sight.

Pearl can see it. The confusion over who she belongs to. She has no memory of her time with White Diamond, so she still thinks she is Pink's, who is gone, so therefore she must be Steven's as Pink's successor. But Steven gives her no orders, so she floats, uncertain.

She was Pink's, so she'd never been an exemplary example of a Homeworld Pearl. She'll adapt easier to freedom than Pearl ever did.

They'll all realise, eventually, what it means. How many more secrets Pearl has kept from them.

They wave off White and Blue and Yellow's ships. Some of the restored gems and offcolours return eagerly to homeworld - invited, even - to be consultants for change. Still more are rightly wary, and remain scattered about the island, clinging to their closest friends. Making sense of things again. Celebrating.

Steven plays a song on the beach - and his musical talent is all Greg Universe and not a shard of Rose. They all revel in the quiet for a moment, the peace of being whole and together again and having finally succeeded in a quest of thousands of years.

"Um," Pink Pearl says in the quiet.

"AHHH!" Everyone else screams.

"What are you doing here?" Amethyst shouts, pointing.

"They left you behind?" Garnet asks, disapproving but not unkind.

"Well, yes," she murmurs. "I belong to Pink, but as Pink is gone..." Her gaze drifts once more to Steven.

Steven, to his credit, rises to the occasion. "You don't belong to anyone, anymore. You're your own gem now. You can do what you like. Stay here, or go to Homeworld - what is it you want to do?"

Pink Pearl blinks at him, long and slow. She just looks confused.

"That's a lot to drop on a Pearl all at once," Pearl cuts in, voice high and wobbly, laying a hand on Pink Pearl's shoulder. The guilt - misplaced, she knows, but that doesn't stop its churn within - makes her smile shaky, but she uniquely understands that tilt shift, at the stubbornness of not just programming but a lifetime of societal reinforcement. She should do this much. Be allowed this small atonement. "You don't have to do anything right away. Nobody will be... unhappy, if you take your time deciding."

"Wait, but I thought Pearl – _our_ Pearl, I mean - belonged to Pink." Amethyst says, arms crossed and thinking hard. "Why is there another Pearl who belonged to Pink?"

The silence is sudden, sharp, and deafening. And Pearl knows she is out of time.

She laughs nervously. It's a reflex. It's better than crying.

Compartmentalize. The conversation will be difficult, but she can get through it. She didn't even do anything wrong this time! (Except keeping secrets, secrets layered upon secrets layered upon secrets and she's never really wanted to keep any of them but her tongue gets tied in her mouth and the words won't come and it’s easier to loudly change the subject or not say anything at all.)

"Pearl," Steven's voice is small, and worried - the exact same tone he'd used as he'd handed her phone back to her with a stunned expression on his face. "Is this... another order? Is this something you want to tell us, but you can't?"

She sighs, shoulders sagging. "No, Steven." She sits back down, arms wrapped around her knees. Pink Pearl sits next to her, mimicking her posture, and it would be comforting if she didn't recognise it for the habit of Pearls to line up in a row on display whenever there was a gathering. "It's not. It's just something I don't particularly like to remember."

Garnet sits on her other side. “Is it from the War?” she asks, quiet. Reassuring.

“No. This is before that. Or maybe even… the start of it. For me.” She takes a deep breath. No point dragging it out. "You probably already guessed," she says. "Before I was given to Pink, I served White Diamond."

"Whaaaaaaat?" Amethyst gasps.

Garnet doesn't look particularly shocked, but Steven is frowning. "I saw some of Mom's memories," he says. "From Homeworld. When she started working on the colony, it was you, but before that..."

"Well, yes, it became evident early on that when it came to building a colony, Pink didn't really keep... schedules. You can _imagine_ how the other Diamonds reacted to _that_." Beside her, Pink Pearl shivers slightly, catches it, then goes still again.

"And White Diamond punished her, by taking her Pearl away," Steven murmurs sadly.

Pearl shrugs, waving a hand airly. As though maybe if she makes it sound like not a big deal, it would become true. "That's about the shape of it. White decided that Pink Pearl had become a 'distraction' so took her away to be 'fixed'. And sent me in her place." And Pearl had gone, unquestioningly, White's perfect little robot to execute her orders.

"No way! Is that when, you know, the thing with the eye happened?" Amethyst asks, gesturing at Pink Pearl's cracked face.

Pink Pearl frowns, hand hesitantly reaching up to trace over her missing eye. Pearl can see the anxiety coiling there - after all, part of a Pearl's job was to be pretty, and such a disfigurement would have likely got any other Pearl shattered and disposed of.

"The damage I can only assume came later, when Pink faked her own shattering." And those were slippery words, when it was Pearl who had facilitated it, Pearl who made it possible, Pearl who actually did the deed. She'd felt sick enough when the Diamonds had struck back, corrupting all the gems on Earth - this new evidence of the side effect of the Diamonds' rage was no easier to stomach. Harder, perhaps, because a fellow Pearl had suffered so horrendously for it. Harder because for but one twist of fate, it could have easily been her.

It's the privilege of a Diamond that they can commit horrors and face no true consequences. The knowledge is bitter, at how easily they will be forgiven, at how quickly buried resentment and fear will turn to admiration and love. At how long true change will take, because so many discontented gems will be satisfied with even the smallest of latitudes their once perfectionist rulers grant them.

“So there you have it,” she says into the vast silence.

Nobody really has anything to say. Eventually, Steven ventures, “Is that everything then? No more surprises?”

Pearl blinks, and thinks about it. “I don’t think so?” Her voice wanders off into a question. “Nothing I can think of, anyway.”

“That’s craaaazy though,” Amethyst says, who all things told, is taking the revelation very well. Likely because it’s abstract to her – she’s only known Earth, and has never had to grasp the complex inter-gem politics of Homeworld. “I mean, I knew you were old, but like, not _that _old.”

“Amethyst!” Steven hisses. “You can’t just-”

“Age is such a _human_ thing to worry about, Steven,” Pearl dismisses. “Although I suppose, yes, for what it’s worth I _would_ be the oldest Pearl. For what little good that does, it’s not like age gives you any authority.” Even the youngest diamond towered above all others.

Steven’s grin turns mischievous. “So does that mean, when you tell me it’s bedtime, I _don’t_ have to listen?”

“Oh no, don’t think you’re getting away with that, Steven. It’s been a big day. As soon as dinner’s finished, off to bed with you,” Pearl informs him, wagging a finger.

Steven just laughs, and Greg calls over, “Food’s ready!”

They return to the barbecue, with Connie, Bismuth, Lapis and Peridot, who all pause when Pink Pearl joins them but don’t comment. Amethyst or Steven will no doubt fill them in later, and she’s fine with that.

Pearl excuses herself at some point while the others are eating, retreating to the top of temple. She can still keep an eye on them gathered on the beach well enough, but it’s quiet, and she can see the stars more clearly.

It doesn’t take much longer for Garnet to find her. “I thought you might be here.”

“You didn’t need to come. I just needed a moment,” Pearl says, but shifts aside to give Garnet more room to sit. She does.

“You’re still bothered,” Garnet comments, quietly. Pearl tugs her coat closer around herself. This is the first time she’s formed without any of the typical adornments of a Pearl, after centuries of slowly discarding the impractical fripperies and translucent tulle Pearls usually wore, to showcase their daintiness.

“It’s been… a difficult few weeks,” she admits. It’s easier with Garnet – her oldest ally now, the only one who had been around at the start, who’d seen when Pearl was first learning to navigate the concept of freedom, who knew ‘Rose’ and not just the legend. She’s seen her at her worst, in the war, and in the leadup and aftermath of Rose’s death. There’s nothing left for Pearl to be embarrassed about in front of her.

“Hm.” Garnet doesn’t offer anything more, just sits there in silence. Unjudging.

Pearl lets it sit, for a while. Then eventually whispers, “Pink was the opposite of White in every way. White… _hated_ imperfection. Even back then. But Pink… she celebrated it. She loved uniqueness.” She lets out a breathy laugh. “And her Pearl was the same way. She never had any hope of pleasing White Diamond.”

Garnet still says nothing.

“I don’t… I have regrets, but there’s so little I would change, now. As selfish as that may be.” She shrugs her shoulders, though Garnet isn’t even looking to see her performed nonchalance. “But looking at her, Pink Pearl, I can’t help but wonder…”

She trails off. The words feel traitorous on her tongue, so linger unsaid.

She’s been free in name for thousands of years. She’d even started to believe it, sometimes, so enamoured with Pink – with _Rose_. Felt secure and haughty as her closest confidant, her most trusted. It made her feel like they were _equals._

Until that delusion was shattered by a single man, and all she was left with was secrets and duty and memories, and the haunting realisation that her freedom had always been just another one of Pink Diamond's countless illusions. When she was no longer keeping her secrets because she wanted to, but because Pink had left her with no choice.

Garnet follows her gaze. From here, they can barely see the others, but Pink Pearl is sitting by the barbecue, listening with a rapt smile as Amethyst is telling some story of some battle. By her exaggerated movements, it’s clear she’s enjoying having such an attentive audience for a change.

“I see,” Garnet murmurs. “She never spoke of her, then?”

Pearl sags from relief at not having to say it. Even then, she can’t help but reflexively make excuses. “She never wanted anyone to know Pink Diamond was still alive. She could never take the risk.”

She’d never once expressed regret to Pearl, however. Never once appeared to worry about the Pearl she’d left behind in White Diamond’s tender care.

White Diamond hadn’t cared about losing _her_ Pearl, of course. Pearl had known that, expected it. To Homeworld gems, Pearls were just accessories, not all that different to mobile phones. Losing one was a brief inconvenience, but like all possessions, one could easily do without. You didn’t _miss_ it, or worry about it.

She hadn’t thought Pink Diamond was like that. Only now, looking at the evidence…

Garnet hums again, under her breath. “I don’t think Rose was as good at executing her ideals in practice as she thought. And she was selfish, more selfish than I'd ever guessed. But that doesn't mean it was worthless."

“It could have been me,” Pearl says, her voice strangling on the words.

“But it wasn’t,” Garnet replies evenly.

“It could have-”

“It _wasn’t_,” Garnet repeats, more forcefully.

Pearl lets it drop. She knows. There’s nothing productive here. Rose is gone.

She’s always been obsessive, though. White Diamond had remembered that about her. Made her that way.

They sit in a silence a while longer. It looks like Amethyst is wrapping up her story. Pink Pearl is clapping, hesitantly, but is cajoled along by the others and her smile widens and begins to look genuine.

She’ll adapt so fast.

“Will you be okay?” Garnet asks eventually.

Pearl huffs, and stretches her legs out. “Of course.” She cranes her neck to stare up the stars. “As I said, it’s simply been a rough few weeks. And Steven is…” She trails off, staring down at him by the campfire.

Garnet nods, the slightest of smiles on her face in agreement.

Steven is the best of everything she thought Pink had been. It took her too long to acknowledge that, to come to terms with it. But in the face of thousands of years, it had been an eyeblink. She’s allowed, she thinks, to have a few weeks to adjust. To come to terms with a future where the weight of her secrets – _all _of her secrets – has finally been lifted.

They’ve all come so terribly far.


End file.
